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Michael Bell-Smith, "Video Created to Fix Stuck Pixels in Computer Monitors Recast (with Soundtrack and Sunset) as Video to Fix Your Stuck Mind" (link to Quicktime .mov here ). This was posted a while back but I missed it (thanks, paul). Very amusing--excellent title.
Petra Cortright: from Selected System Landscapes:
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Karl Blossfeldt meets Tron by way of pixel art. The image above is a "remix"--apologies to the artist, just wanted something self contained and looping for the blog since most of imagery fills the entire screen. You can page through the presentation, which is somewhat JODI-esque but with more of the cool botanical imagery--by clicking anywhere on the screen. Just singling out a couple of pages I like--for the busy surfer.
"Enigmatic Rap (Piano Version)" [mp3 removed]
Somewhat inspired by a piano rendition of Gary Numan's "Are 'Friends' Electric?" I heard a while back, but without the emo vocals that came with it.
For those who might've lost interest or faith in Lost (new watchers, never mind, you'll never get up to speed): the series suddenly rocks anew. A deft exercise in Tarantino-esque narrative manipulation, last night's installment "Exposé" recapped three seasons of the show through the POV of two minor, expendable characters, including a revisitation of the infamous pilot episode's "crash on the beach." (Which means the producers shot footage from that expensive opening for use many shows later in the story arc? Seems so.) What critic tedg calls "folding" abounds--one of the expendable characters guest-stars in a TV trash series called Exposé, a clip of which is seen at the beginning of her back story, an equally trash noir tale of a jewel heist she pulls off with another island crash survivor, all framed within Lost's own Survivors vs Others uber-narrative and climaxing with a macabre, Poe-like ending. Russian toy dolls-within-dolls that figure prominently in the story mimic the nested plots. Humorously, only the comic relief character Hurley has actually watched Exposé, but loves it.
Last week's show, "The Man From Tallahassee," also a keeper, featured flashbacks--finally--explaining how John Locke got in the wheelchair he mysteriously no longer needs. One wishes the writers would cut the poor bastard a break--the scheming cult leader Ben Linus (Torwald) immediately undermines Locke's moment of decisive heroism involving the Others' submarine: played again.
"Sorting is the new Breakdance."
(the graphic is from Wikipedia, that line is from Crystalpunk, via cpb:softinfo)
YouTube of Ryuichi Sakamoto and his wife Akiko Yano playing an old YMO standard together at the piano. Back in the day I couldn't get my sophisticated record collecting friends interested in YMO or Sakamoto. They just couldn't go there. I'm glad to see that people are still discovering them/him through the Net or what have you. [/self pitying reminiscence]
What I'm listening to now: Barbara Morgenstern. The Grass Is Always Greener, Nichts Muss, Fjorden are the ones I've heard. Kind of Slapp Happy-era Dagmar Krause meets To Rococo Rot but an original songwriter as interested in texture as tonality. The "transposition queen"--you never know where her key and chord changes within a song are going to take you, but it's not meandering, it's completely focused and intentional. Lyrics in English and German, alternating.
Attack of the Clones, Part 5
Klaus Mosettig (born 1975), Processual Minimalism, 2006, a colony of forest ants constructing a hill. (via VVork)
From The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas, 1974:
A gallery in New York exhibited a collection of 2 million live army ants, on loan from Central America, in a one-colony show entitled "Patterns and Structures." They were displayed on sand in a huge square bin, walled by plastic sides...Previous clones
[...]
I learned that the army ants had all died.
[...]
There was no explanation, beyond the rumored, unproved possibility of cold drafts in the gallery over the weekend. Monday they were moving sluggishly, with less precision, dully. Then, the death began, affecting first one part and then another, and within a day all 2 million were dead...
[...]
It is a melancholy parable. I am unsure of the meaning, but I do think it has something to do with all that plastic--that, and the distance from the earth.
Attack of the Clones, Part 4
Steven Read, Please Wait, 2005 (via VVork)
Cory Arcangel’s Panasonic TH42PV60EH Plasma Screen Burn, 2007 (also via VVork)
Bonus: Nominee for Worst Theoretical Justification for an Artwork in 2007
from T.Whid:
Arcangel’s "Panasonic TH42PV60EH Plasma Screen Burn" is brash and bold, it says "fuck you, I’m fucking up this expensive piece of equipment. Why? Because I’m motherfucking Cory Arcangel that’s why!" Steven Read's piece is nitpicky and fussy. His piece says “look! I wrote a program to destroy an obsolete piece of hardware. Why? Because I’m a geek." Arcangel’s piece is about fucking with consumer dreams. Read's piece is about… time and phosphors?I would personally like to see Arcangel going back to destroying obsolete pieces of hardware instead of acting like a jaded rock star. I know some artists who could do some cool things with that plasma screen. (Also, we're taking it on faith that the screen is actually destroyed--in any case, if the gallery sells it, it's contractually tied up as an expensive name plate, which is practically the same thing.)
Previous clone attacks